The environment in and around severe storms is a dangerous place. Even though tornadoes are an obvious danger, other life-threatening thunderstorm hazards, such as lightning and flash floods can be just as deadly.
Spotter reports are vital to your community and the National Weather Service BUT NOT at the expense of your life or the lives of others. Your safety, and those around you, is to be your number one priority! We mean this!
Before venturing out, be aware of the hazards of thunderstorms and the recommended practices to minimize your risk. And remember...
ALWAYS OBEY federal, state, and local laws and directives from public safety officials.
Never put yourself in harm's way. This includes attempting to walk or drive over obstructions such as flooded roadways and downed power lines, and positioning yourself under objects that have a potential to fall or be blown over due to severe weather.
If driving, do not text. If driving, do not look at the weather radar app on your smartphone, tablet or laptop. Pull off to the side of the road, THEN investigate the weather situation and plan your course of action.
Adhere to the concept of ACES at all times. ACES stands for Awareness, Communication, Escape Routes, and Safe Zones.
ACES is a concept commonly used by emergency management personnel. If you remember ACES, you can remain safe in any situation, including spotting.
Constantly observe the situation around you, called "situational awareness".
Continuously monitoring the risks around you can save your life, especially in rapidly changing weather conditions. Knowing that there is a river crossing, or observing the street is lined with power poles and trees, can prepare you for the hazards of severe weather.
When you are aware of the imminent threats, and you are thinking ahead about possible outcomes, you can position yourself better to minimize these threats.
Remembering ACES: to remain aware of your surroundings, have open lines of communication, know your escape routes, and know your safe zones wherever you are can increase your safety.
You must be constantly aware of your location relative to a storm AND its motion. Never assume all storms move from the southwest to the northeast. It is critical to have current information about the motion and behavior of storms in your area and to use this information to avoid the most dangerous parts of the storm.
Storms typically move in the same direction as the mid-level atmospheric winds, so you may experience storms moving FROM the west, northwest or even north.
However, supercell storms sometimes move (turn) to the right of the mid-level winds, and these storms typically have a higher potential of to become severe. What this means is the upper level winds would infer a particular direction but the supercell actually moves to the RIGHT of the expected motion.
Other storms can split into two separate storms with one moving "left" of the mean upper level wind flow. When this occurs it moves considerably faster than the other splitting storm.
Since these motions can be hard to determine visually, it is a good idea to take advantage of radar data to help with these critical details.
Once you know where the storm is and which way it is moving, you can determine where to position yourself to view the updraft region of the storm.
For a storm moving northeast, the best observing location would be to the SOUTHEAST of the storm. From this direction, you can get a clear view of the rain-free updraft region of the storm where wall clouds and associated tornadoes may form. In any other direction, rain and hail may block the view of the updraft region of the storm.
Here are a few basic tips that could save your life if you are watching a storm from your vehicle.
Tornadoes are violently rotating columns of air attached to a thunderstorm and in contact with the ground, whether or not a condensation funnel is visible to the ground. Debris or dirt swirling on the ground, under an area of cloud base rotation, may be a clue that it is a tornado and not a funnel cloud or gustnado.
Here are a few safety tips if you encounter a tornado:
Turn Around Don't Drown! Thunderstorms can produce torrential rain over a short period resulting in flash flooding. Flooding is particularly dangerous at night when it is harder to see the road is flooded and even harder to tell how deep the water is.
Flooding causes more fatalities each year than any other thunderstorm hazard. More than half of all flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous flood water. Use these safety tips and facts to avoid being a victim of a flash flood:
When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors! Lightning is an underrated killer. Nearly as many people lose their lives to lightning strikes as they do to tornadoes, but because lightning typically hits just one or two people at a time, fatalities due to lightning receive less publicity.
Lightning occurs with every thunderstorm and is the most common weather hazard facing spotters. As a spotter, you are frequently positioned in the open or on a hill top, making you especially vulnerable to lightning.
Here are a few important safety guidelines for dealing with lightning:
Damaging thunderstorm straight line winds known as downbursts are another hazard facing a spotter. A downburst is a strong downdraft with an outrush of damaging winds on or near the ground.
Most of the wind damage done by severe thunderstorms is caused by downbursts. Downburst winds may exceed 100 mph in the most intense storms, and may cause damage similar to a tornado.
Here are some tips to stay safe in and around downbursts:
Large hail can cause serious injuries and damage to vehicles and buildings. Although fatalities attributed to hail are rare, it is the costliest weather element in the United States with an average of more than a billion dollars in agriculture and property damage each year.
The costliest U.S. hailstorm caused around $2 billion dollars in damage in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area on April 10, 2001.
Below are some points about hail that could minimize damage to your vehicle when storm spotting.
Safety First